


The Gay-Straight Alliance

by Amy



Category: Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot
Genre: Chromatic Character, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amy/pseuds/Amy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why doesn't Albert Einstein High School have a gay-straight alliance?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gay-Straight Alliance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lls_mutant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lls_mutant/gifts).



**Why doesn't AEHS have a gay-straight alliance?**

 **\--Perin**

 

I think there are actually, like, four of them, but they're all different groups of people and none of them will work together so they don't have the minimum number of people required for school funding.

 

 **Because my guidance counselor says I need more after-school activities than just student council.**

 

You could join the art society with me.

 

 **No I couldn't. I suck at art.**

 

You're saying this because you want to start a gay-straight alliance, aren't you?

 

 **I just think it would be a good idea. And my parents wouldn't even care, because I can tell them I'm part of the straight half. They think social justice issues are important. But my guidance counselor says that if you want to start a club you have to have a teacher who's willing to supervise, and at least ten people who are willing to join, and we don't have that.**

 

I don't know. I think we could.

 

***

"It's so great that you're sitting with us again!" Tina said. The table was tight, with all of them: Mia and JP; Tina and Boris; Shameeka, Lana, and Trisha; and now Perin and Ling Su. They squeezed in between Mia and Boris and tried not to notice the mouth-breathing on one side and the furious paper-writing on the other. There wasn't even room for a single bodyguard; Wahim and Lars stood by the door, alternately watching the lunch table and checking their Blackberries.

"We didn't want you to think we don't like you," explained Ling Su. "It's just that after-" She glanced to her left, saw that Mia wasn't paying any attention, and continued. "After the whole thing we don't talk about, we didn't want Lilly to think that absolutely no one liked her, and then once we started sitting there it became the best way to work on student council plans."

"But she just spends lunch hooking up with Kenneth anyway," Perin said, "so we figured it would be okay to come sit with you guys. If that's okay with you."

"Of course it is," Tina said. "We missed you guys!"

"We missed you too," Ling Su assured her.

Before they could say anything else, the bell rang.

"We're all getting together at my house tonight for a sleepover," Tina said. "Well, not Boris and JP, but everyone else. Do you want to come?"

Ling Su shrugged and nodded. "Sure," Perin said. Then she squinted. "Is Mia okay?"

"She's been like this for a while," Tina said. "You just have to be loud. Mia- MIA."

Mia's head jerked up. "Yeah?"

"Perin and Ling Su are coming to the sleepover tonight."

"Okay." Mia blinked like she'd just woken up. "Sorry, I'm really working on this report about Genovian olive oil-"

"It's fine," Ling Su assured her. "We'll see you tonight."

As they walked to class after lunch, Perin sounded worried. "We're going to a sleepover?" she said. "With _Trisha_? And _Lana Weinberger_?"

"A sleepover at Tina's," Ling Su said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "We're going to get you a faculty advisor."

***

The sleepover was better than they'd expected- not that that would be hard. Tina's parents weren't there, so Trisha brought two bottles of wine, which made it a lot easier to accept that they were lying around in pajamas with _Lana Weinberger_. They talked about how appalling the new Buffy movie would be, and then they made fun of a particularly hideous dress Principal Gupta had worn, and then they all watched Rocky Horror, even Mia, who put down her school project long enough to do the time warp with everyone else.

Lana and Trish weren't entirely terrible outside of school. They weren't mean or anything. Lana told Ling Su that she might want to commission a painting of a horse, and Trisha even showed Perin some cool ways to put on makeup that didn't make her feel completely weird. It wasn't until after two in the morning, when they were gossiping to stay awake, that Perin asked the question. "When did your bodyguards meet each other, anyway?" She and Ling Su were curled up on an arm chair together, and Ling Su was amazed anyone else could even hear her question.

"Lars started following me instead of my dad freshman year," Mia said. "So then?"

That wasn't what Perin had been asking, but before she could figure out how to rephrase it, Lana did. "Not like that, geek," she said. "She means when did they start dating."

To Ling Su the question sounded like an explosion, but no one even batted an eye. "Oh," Mia said. "I don't think they ever really told us."

"They're dating?" Shameeka said. "I thought they were into Mademoiselle Klein."

"You probably thought Ricky Martin was straight too, didn't you?" asked Trisha, sounding almost pitying.

Mia rolled her eyes. " _You_ thought that if they were gay they could be stoned to death."

"How was I supposed to know that the bodyguard union doesn't allow for discrimination based on sexual orientation?"

As it turned out, while none of them actually knew how the bodyguards had gotten together, Tina had created a whole mythology around the idea of Lars and Wahim. Maybe they'd fallen in love years ago, and then lost track of each other and then fate brought them together at Albert Einstein High School and they rekindled their secret affair that had lain dormant for so many years. Maybe their mutual friends in the Gobi Desert had been telling them for ages that they'd be perfect for each other but they'd been like ships passing in the night until working for her dad and Genovia brought them together at Albert Einstein High School, and they began a secret affair.

Most of Tina's stories ended like that, actually. It was how she told people about her relationship with Boris, too, but instead of "Gobi Desert" it was the cafeteria.

Around the third story Tina suggested, Mia grabbed her school project notebook and started writing furiously, like something in one of Tina's fantasies was illuminating something about olive oil presses. But Tina was too distracted by her story to notice one less person in her audience. She fell asleep right in the middle of a particularly good scenario involving mistaken identities, amnesia, and a kidney transplant.

"Why do you want to know, anyway?" Trisha asked Perin. Even in the dark, Ling Su could see her eyes narrowing.

"Just wondering," Perin said, her voice shaking a little. Ling Su squeezed her hand as tight as she could.

By the time Ling Su's heart rate finally slowed down to normal, Lana and Shameeka had already spent ten minutes debating whether Lars was Kevin Costner and Wahim Whitney Houston, or vice versa.

***

"Do Wahim and Lars know that you know about them?" Ling Su asked Tina during gym class on Monday.

Tina's eyes flashed quickly over to where her bodyguard was standing, then back. "I think so. If not, some of the questions Mia asked them when she was writing that slash story for Yuletide last year were really inappropriate."

"Cause, like." Ling Su had practiced this in her head, but it sounded dumber out loud. "I bet it would mean a lot to them to know that you support them."

"Of course we support them," Tina said. "I always support romances. And Wahim knows how many times I've watched _Brokeback Mountain_."

"Perin was saying maybe we should start a gay-straight alliance," she said. "I bet they would-"

"Oh!" Tina squealed. "That is such a great idea. I need more extracurricular activities, and I was just telling Shameeka that the big thing missing from my high school experience is a gay best friend! Yes, we should totally do that. We could be bridging the gap to true love for someone! I know you have to go sit with Lilly today at lunch so that she doesn't feel like you've abandoned her just like everyone else in her life has, but would it be okay if I tell everyone else at lunch?"

It was always easy with Tina.

***

They spent every day at lunch with her, but because Lilly was dedicating her entire weekend to a special episode of _Lilly Tells it Like It Is_ , Perin and Ling Su were able to say yes when Mia invited them over for a sleepover on Saturday night. It was all the same people, Lana and Trisha and Shameeka and Tina, but it wasn't weird this time either. Ling Su wondered if she'd ever get used to how weird it _wasn't_.

This time, they all watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which Tina insisted on because she was so excited at the idea of the gay-straight alliance, and also because she liked to sing along to Wig in a Box. Mia made everyone popcorn and revealed that she'd even talked to her neighbor Ronnie (formerly Ronald, currently Ronnette) for advice. Trisha and Lana didn't really seem to care, but they weren't making fun of them, so it was okay. And it was kind of nice, Ling Su thought, doing things with just Mia and Shameeka. Just like things used to be.

"You know who would be great at organizing this?" Tina said at one point. But she didn't finish, because everyone knew the answer. And they knew that, if Mia was part of this, Lilly wouldn't be.

That was kind of depressing.

No one asked why this was so important to them, or why Perin- Perin, who tried not to be in front of people whenever she could avoid it- had started this. Ling Su finally relaxed, thinking maybe it just wouldn't come up, and that was when Lana looked up from her toenails, which she was painting bright red, and gestured at them with the container of polish. "You two are dating, right?" she asked.

No one had asked like that before- no one had made them SAY it. Tina made a face. "You can't just ask someone that," she said to Lana. But the question still hung in the air.

Perin squeezed Ling Su's hand as tightly as she could, and somehow, that gave Ling Su the courage to nod. "Yeah," she said, like it wasn't a big deal or anything.

"I thought so," Lana said. "I told you," she added to Trisha. "You owe me five dollars."

"Whatever, you thought that Peter Tsu was straight. We're even now."

"Please. I thought he was bi, and you haven't proven that he wasn't."

"He wouldn't hook up with me."

"That doesn't prove he's not into girls, it just proves he has taste."

"Maybe he'll show up at the gay-straight alliance meeting, just to prove how wrong you are."

And just like that, the conversation continued, like it hadn't been the scariest moment of Ling Su's life, even scarier than when the guidance counselor told her she had to send out her portfolios for RISD and Parsons and Berkeley all in the same week.

For the first time in what felt like ages, she felt like she could relax. She rested her head on Perin's shoulder, and listened while discussion moved on to which Bring it On movie was the most factually accurate. Shameeka and Trisha were still debating the intricacies of a wolf wall when Ling Su fell asleep.

***

Early in the morning, Mia was so engaged in her report about the history of Genovian olive oil pressing, circa 1254-1650, that she didn't notice the emergency phone call Ling Su had to field until she explained that she and Perin would have to leave early. Ling Su didn't say that that they were going to Lilly's to help with the shoot, but Mia probably figured it out. She didn't say anything, though; just told them to have something to eat before they left.

Mr. Gianini made breakfast for all of them, plus Mia's mom and her little brother. Perin and Ling Su stayed as long as they could, listening to Mrs. Thermopolis rage about Don't Ask Don't Tell, and all the politicians who didn't want it repealed, and where they could stick their morals and her tax dollars.

"We want to start a gay-straight alliance at school," Tina informed Mia's parents through a mouthful of pancake.

"That's fantastic," Mia's mom said. "It's good that you kids are trying to show support for equality."

"Well, we can't do anything until we find a faculty supporter," Tina said. It sounded innocent enough, if you didn't know Tina was a diabolical genius.

"Thanks for everything," Ling Su and Perin said in almost one voice. It was kind of exciting to be holding hands while they left, to not be worrying about how that might look.

***

It was nice, Ling Su thought, having people like Wahim and Lars around. People who weren't Gay with a capital G, but were just people, who clearly loved each other, who seemed perfectly comfortable with it without being over the top in one way or another. Ling Su knew plenty of guys who had boyfriends- come on, she was an art student- but she didn't know too many guys in New York who had boyfriends but never got harassed for it and never felt the need to hide.

And, okay. That was probably because Wahim and Lars both had guns and each knew at least sixteen ways to kill a person and make it look like an accident, and at least a little bit because Genovia had one of the most inclusive human-rights policies about discrimination based on race, religion, disability, gender, and sexuality in all of Europe, but Ling Su thought it was also that they were just okay with it. After all, Lars didn't just have a boyfriend. He had a boyfriend in front of Mia's grandmother. If he could survive that, Ling Su thought, she'd be okay being kind-of, sort-of out of the closet with a few of her friends in the eleventh grade at a progressive high school.

***

The first meeting of the AEHS Gay-Straight Alliance happened in Mr. Gianini's classroom. He told them he would have been happy to be the faculty advisor even without Mia's mom's suggestions, but it definitely hadn't hurt. Amazingly, they had more than ten students show up even without counting the freshmen who were only there for algebra extra-help with Mr. G in one corner. Principal Gupta peered in at one point, but she didn't sit and listen. She just said it was good that they were starting a club like this, and that they had such a diversity of attendance.

And they did. Ling Su watched proudly as normally shy Perin spoke to the group who gathered in front of her: writers like Mia and JP, biologists like Tina, musicians like Boris, cheerleaders like Shameeka and Lana and Trisha, and- well, she didn't really know Peter Hsu, but whatever he did, people like him, too.

And stationed at the door, two gigantic men, each holding a gun, each staring protectively at one of the girls in the room. They were there because it was their job, but they were also there because they were _there_.

Lars caught Ling Su watching him, and she felt her smile grow a little bigger at his look.

***

One of the best parts about having friends with bodyguards was going to out for group date nights. They never had to find someone with a fake ID to buy tickets for R-rated movies, and they always got the best seats in the house. Ling Su noticed that Mia and Tina very carefully chose seats so that Lars and Wahim could be sitting next to each other while doing their jobs.

Ling Su and Perin, clutching hands, went up to them. "Thanks," Ling Su said.

Neither Lars nor Wahim looked up from their Blackberries for a moment, until they seemed to realize Ling Su was talking to them. "What for?" Wahim asked.

Ling Su tried to think of what to say, but she didn't have to. "For being inspirations," Perin blurted out.

And then Perin was blushing, and Ling Su was blushing, and they went for a far-off corner of the movie theatre where no one could see how much they were blushing, or any of the other things they planned to do.

"Thank god for you guys," Ling Su thought she heard Mia saying. "Can you imagine how long it would have taken if they _didn't_ have you as healthy role models?"

But maybe she was just imagining it.


End file.
